Campaign status and development

[102nd-YU-devill]

Dear friends,

I deem it necessary to update all of you on the status of this campaign and its future development. Please, do not comment in this topic about anything.

You are free to discuss this in your respective forums. If any of the sides agree with a total consensus that their position in collision with what I will write here, the commanders can report back to me and we will hold a meeting of all representatives and decide on the future actions.

First of all, I apologize to have allowed myself to be unclear in announcing the rules.

I was not clear because I assumed (wrongly) that all of us have a unison view of what is the correct behavior in a SEOW campaign. Another reason is that I didn't want to enforce any rules change, rather I tried to convince people that these changes were necessary and I was even open to suggestions on how exactly to change them. The problem was that the changes were outright opposed and I found no way of communicating efficiently and clearly with the parties involved.

Instead, I could have simply enforced my decision to which an admin and a game designer is entitled to, and such actions have been practiced by every campaign admin in every campaign that I flew in, until this one.

Therefore, I want to clean the slate, so to speak, and to make it very clear:

1. I am not biased to any side
2. I will change the rules if it is necessary for a correct functioning of this campaign.

About point 1.; anyone who has ever designed a campaign understands that the campaign designer's main wish and goal is to have the campaign run as he imagined it would. Who will win is of very little importance.

About point 2.; what is important in a campaign like this is that people have fun while flying the most historical missions possible. If each pilot has a chance for victory in the air, the total outcome is irrelevant to all but the planners, since they are the ones investing time into the general strategy. However, if we fulfill the goal of having all the pilots with a fair chance to perform their assignments successfully, then we also have a high probability that the two sides will have a good and unpredictable campaign until the very end. This is what makes the stuff of good campaigns.

I have tried my best to set up this campaign with all of this in mind, and I think I did a solid job.

However, no campaign so far has been completely and perfectly designed, and mine is not an exception. Throughout all previous campaigns there have been rule and balance changes, and this is something which is quite necessary for the ultimate success of the campaign. Rules change because this is not a competition of two equal sides, with equal forces and predispositions. This is why an admin has to constantly maintain a fair balance.

Campaign status

I was convinced by strong support from several of the veterans in SEOW to continue the campaign and not engage myself in discussions with individuals. This, I must admit is where I have completely failed, but I didn't to it from malice or bad intentions, as I said before I did it in the hope of convincing them that this is a correct way to go.

Anyway, right now we are in a following situation:

The allies have completed their planning for tonight's mission.

The axis has to plan 6 more flights (17 planes) for a full roster. Everything else seems to have been planned.

It doesn't take a lot of time to complete this task, and therefore from this standpoint we could be ready and build the mission at 20h00 CET, for a mission start as announced at 21h30 CET.

The Axis planner Cipson informed me however that the pilots have been given a stand-down and that the campaign is announced as on hold indefinitely. This can present a difficulty for the Axis side to organize itself for tonight.

I call on all pilots who want to fly this campaign to come tonight at the designated time, and I call on the Axis planners (10 of them registered in total) to complete the planning on time.

If I get no response or a negative response, the mission will be postponed to next Monday, and we will have a meeting with the campaign coordinators to resolve the issues that are preventing the campaign to move forward.

Again, I wish that we can all stick to the earlier plan for tonight, but if that proves to be impossible you will be notified via this forum.

My sincere apologies for this inconvenience, we will work so that it will not occur again and so that we will have a stable campaign life until its end.

Cheers!